Insufficient
by jarebear20
Summary: Transported into Thedas, one woman is found by Avvar and brought to their hold, where she is given a chance to live under a new name. Any plans she had on staying uninvolved with the Fifth Blight, however, are shattered when tragedy strikes, and now her only chance at survival lies within the armies at Ostagar. Too bad she already knows how that will go.


"We should return to the hold," Thorvard advised as the longhouse came into view. "The lass is dead."

"Are you that eager to admit that you have lost the favor of the Mountain Father?" Ragna Visätedottir asked with a curl of her lips.

Thorvard refused to let her words rankle him. He had hunted in these lands for far longer than Ragna's eighteen winters and had no shame in putting forth offerings to Korth. "Why must we trouble ourselves for a lowlander?" he asked. "Let her own god take her if the Lady will not."

"How do you know that our Lady has not led us here?" Ragna returned. "Do you speak on her behalf now, Thorvard Red-Hare?"

"Tova found her," Thorvard said. "And it is she that insists on taking us on this foolhardy diversion. Not the Lady."

Tova had wondered how long it would take for them to bring her into the conversation. She had used the limp body she now carried as an excuse not to speak, but that only worked for so long. "There is life within this lowlander still."

"Yes but for how much longer?" Thorvard wanted to know. "How long was she in the snow, with no furs to keep out the chill?"

"You could have offered her your furs," Ragna pointed out. "Wrapped her in them until we reached the hold."

Thorvard barely glanced at her. "And freeze myself? Then you would have two bodies to carry, whelp."

Tova saw the way Ragna twitched at the name, saw the way her gloved hand clenched into a fist beneath the edge of her thick leather cloak. Ragna had been brought up in the hold, and struggled with being taken seriously as a hunter by those who had seen more winters than she. Still, there was no one as quick with a bow as Ragna in Tova's view, making her invaluable when it came to gathering food for the coming season.

Tova knew how important it would be in the coming weeks to build up a reserve to see them through the harsh winter ahead. Had she not lost her own family to hunger three winters ago? The ache in her chest reminded her of what she had lost, of what she could lose again, if she did not push herself.

She understood where Thorvard was coming from, however much she wished to the gods that she did not. Seven days their hunting party had traveled from the hold deep within the mountains towards the lowlander settlement known as Jader. Game was scarce, but they had picked up the trail of a herd of druffalo on the third day. By the fifth they had only found a few weaker bovine that would only see them through a couple of months at best. If not for this lowlander, they would be at home with the rest of their party to make restitution to Korth for whatever offense had been made to the Mountain-Father.

Tova glanced down at the woman she had been carrying for most of the day. They had done their best to warm her with a few of the druffalo pelts, but little color had returned to her cheeks. If not for the slight rise and fall of her chest, Tova might have agreed with Thorvard's assessment of the lowlander being dead.

She should have listened to the others. Like Thorvard, they had tried to tell her to abandon the lowlander to whatever fate the gods had for her. But they had not seen the fear in the woman's eyes before she succumbed to the cold. If they had, they might have seen what Tova had and what had kept her from leaving the lowlander to the cold.

Her son had come back to her.

Had the augur not promised her as such? Few were fated to return to the lands of mortals, but her son held favor with the gods and would be returned to her in due time. Now was that time.

"The others are not far off," Tova said. "If you truly feel this task is foolish, Thorvard, you may return with them. I intend to see this through even if you do not."

"I never said that I would not." Thorvard scowled. "Only that I see no point in troubling Asleif when there is nothing to be done. She has earned her rest."

Asleif An Kolskegg had been the shaman of Frosthold when Tova had been a mere whelp. Though it had been many winters since she had left the hold to confer with the Lady of the Skies, Tova knew that Asleif would be the one to help them.

"Will she even see us?" Ragna asked. It was the first time she voiced any dissent with Tova's planning. "You know how great she values her solitude."

"She will see me," Tova insisted. Looking up at the longhouse, she squared her shoulders and started up the path, barely visible in the waning light.

A storm of ice and snow had passed through the mountains the night before, and even the most worn of paths had pockets to catch the unwary. Asleif had built her new home upon a ridge overlooking the valley. One wrong step would send both Tova and the lowlander she carried plummeting to their deaths.

The sky had darkened to a deep, rich purple by the time her feet found level ground. The wind had picked up as well, stinging her face. Behind her, Tova could hear Thorvard muttering as he and Ragna followed her to the front steps of the old shaman's home.

"Asleif!" Tova called out, her voice startling the rams in a nearby pen. "We require your aid!"

The howl of the wind was all that greeted her.

"Are we sure she has not gone to meet with the Lady?" Ragna asked now. "Something about this does not feel right."

Tova shook her head. "The Augur would have informed our thane." Even if she was no longer their shaman, no one truly left the hold. She turned back to the entryway. "Please Asleif! It is I, Tova An Solvi! I would not be here if it was not vital!"

For a moment, she thought that her plea would go unanswered. Tova thought of how long it would take to return to the hold, if the lass would live that long. She did not hear the creak of the door over the wind. If not for the small gasp behind her, she might not have noticed that she now had an audience.

Tova was struck by how little the shaman had changed in all the winters since she had last seen her. There were a few extra lines around the mouth, it was true, but the Asleif before them could have easily been the one from her memory. With hair the color of moonlight, still bound in those tightly corded ropes that fell past her waist, Asleif watched her carefully.

"When I took up residence here, it was with the belief that I would not be disturbed." Asleif gestured to Tova and those that followed her. "And yet, here you are."

"Forgive us, Asleif." Tova might have bowed, if not for the burden she carried. "I would not have come if-"

"-If it were not vital," Asleif finished. "Very well, bring her inside before the chill takes us all."

The heat of the fire in the center of the room was a welcome relief. Tova carefully laid the lowlander as close as she dared to the fire pit. "We found her stumbling around in the snow," she explained, watching Asleif kneel next to her. "We tried to keep her warm, but I did not think we could make it to the hold in time if she has been bitten by frost."

Undoing the druffalo pelts, Asleif looked over the woman's frame. Tova wondered if she saw the same thing she did: the strange clothes, the pale skin that had started to change color from being exposed to the snow. She had not known a lowlander to be so foolish as to be walking this far into the mountains without the proper protection.

"You did well to bring her to me." Asleif brushed a strand of the lowlander's dark hair away from her face. "She needed to be away from the cold. And now we must do our best to warm her up. Come, help me remove these garments from her."

Thorvard had come with them to lend what assistance he could, but upon hearing that they would be disrobing the lowlander, he excused himself to the other end of the longhouse where Ragna sat.

Once the lowlander had been stripped of her wet attire, Asleif and Tova dressed her in a spare tunic and trousers to keep her body from growing colder while they worked. Placing her hands over the woman's body, Asleif whispered in the old tongue and Tova watched as a pale yellow light poured from her fingertips.

"Has she wakened since you found her?" Asleif asked as her magic sank into the lowlander's body. Her mouth thinned when Tova answered negatively. "Then frost is not the only problem here. We need to warm her body slowly. I have some blankets in a chest near my bed. Retrieve them for me."

Tova did as she was told and returned with the blankets in hand. She wrapped the woman as best she could without interrupting Asleif's magic.

"Her heart's wine has slowed from the cold." Asleif did not look up from her work. "If it were a simple matter of chill, warming her with furs would be sufficient. But now we must take extra care to warm her, lest her heart reject it."

Tova wanted to ask her how she was going to accomplish that, but Asleif wore an expression that had her biting her tongue. It was similar to the expression the augur wore when young ones prodded her too often. "What would you have me do?" she asked instead.

"Let me do what you came here for." Now Asleif did look to her. "Join your fellow hunters in warming yourself. If anything changes I will call for you."

Tova looked down at the lowlander lying still on the druffalo pelts and felt fear clutch at her heart. The gods had only just returned her son to her...surely they would not take him away so soon? She leaned down and pressed her lips to the woman's forehead.

"Find your way back, my heart," she whispered. "I have much to tell you when you wake."

Asleif remained silent as Tova retreated to the other side of the longhouse, her focus on warming this lowlander before the Lady took her away. It was difficult work-though she knew of the magics that could twist the heart's wine of any being, she had never actually used them herself. The spirits did not care for such wickedness unless they had become twisted themselves.

No, this required a more straightforward approach. One that she knew would not be easier by any stretch of the imagination, but if this woman was to live, there was no other course of action she could take.

"Mountain-Father!" she spoke now. "Lady of the Skies! I am in need of your assistance." Asleif smiled as she felt a surge in her magic. Looking to the source, she saw a familiar form shrouded in golden light before her. "Hope. It has been some time."

The spirits often took a form that was most comfortable for the mages. For Asleif, this one looked like her mother. "Indeed." Hope watched her from its spot near the fire. "Is there something you wished to speak of, shaman?"

"No." Asleif looked down at the lowlander. Not for the first time, she wondered what might have caused such a person to come here. Was it fate? Or simply chance? "This one has fallen in the mountains. I cannot wake her until her body is ready, but I cannot know when that is. I need help."

Hope was never one to turn down a chance to help. "What do you require of me?"

"Help me tend to her, keep her body from rejecting the warmth. Sooth her. I would not have her lash out like a bear cub when she wakes."

Wordlessly, Hope reached out and pressed a tendril of light to the prone woman's forehead. The body lurched then, one quick solitary jerk that had a sound of alarm coming from the other end of the longhouse, only for it to slump against the pelts. Asleif let out a small sound of relief as she went back to her work.

"What is it?" Tova had returned to her side. Asleif should have known she would not be able to stay away for long.

"The spirits have graced us with their help." Her hands hovering over the woman's heart, Asleif began to coaxing her magic slowly through the body. Too fast and the rejection she had spoken to Tova would be a very real possibility. Her magic would be of little help if she moved too slowly. Like most things, this required a very delicate balance.

She did not send Tova away this time, instead letting the woman watch as she worked. She knew not how long it took, the span of a breath or perhaps most of the evening, but Asleif could feel the change in the lowlander's body the moment it happened.

The heart, no more than a flutter once, now began to beat as strong as any well oiled drum. Skin that had been as pale as fresh snow looked warm in the glow of the fire.

"Hope?" Asleif called gently.

The lowlander's mouth opened. "She struggles." The sadness could be heard in that ethereal voice. "Where am I? I shouldn't be here! Oh god, what if I can't get home? It's so cold..."

"Hope." Asleif's voice was stronger now. It would be a simple task for Hope to get lost in the emotions of the woman they were trying to help. "Can you help her rest?"

"So cold…" The woman fell silent, and for a moment she thought it would remain as such forever. But the steady rise and fall of her chest proved that there would come a time when the women would be able to speak again.

Then the hold could find out what she was doing in the mountain pass. Asleif's mouth thinned at the thought, but she reminded herself that she was no longer involved with the affairs of the hold. It would be something for the augur to deal with, not her.

For now, she would have to keep an eye on the lowlander, and make sure her body was healing properly. It would do her no good to suddenly go into shock after surviving as long as she did.

"What now?" Tova asked, looking up at the shaman once more.

"Now we wait. The rest is up to her."


End file.
